Ann Eliza Hammond. Abolitionists surmised that the “persecution” that Prudence and her students endured resulted from the “genuine fruit of colonization principles and prejudices,” a criticism of colonization as both primitive and racist.101 Arthur Tappan, a wealthy white entrepreneur and brother of businessman Lewis Tappan, even bankrolled the creation of a newspaper, eventually called the Unionist, to “disabuse the public mind of the misrepresentations and falsehoods” about the Canterbury Female Seminary, Prudence Crandall, free black communities, and the radical abolition movement more broadly.102 Abolitionists framed white Canterbury opponents as savage, thus turning upside down the myth of African savagery and, by extension, the rationale for racial prejudice and slavery.
Some New England journalists defended Judson by arguing that Prudence had sullied her own reputation and that of Canterbury in her overambitious and misguided effort to educate African American women. One unnamed writer regarded the entire project as “outlandish.” This writer caricatured the students as “girls with black skins, wooly heads and flat noses,” a far cry from “young ladies and little misses.”103 The Rhode Island Republican referred to Prudence as successful only in “[making] herself look ridiculous” by associating with “fanatical friends”—surely a reference to abolitionists—who rejected the notion that the Black Law was a “good and wholesome” measure to protect Canterbury and its residents from being “overrun” by African Americans.104 Similarly the New Hampshire Gazette found Prudence’s “overzealous [spirit] too much influenced by William Lloyd Garrison and Arthur Buffum,” assuming that any agency on the part of a woman must be traceable to a man.105
The case of State of Connecticut v. Prudence Crandall began on August 23, 1833, in a Windham County courtroom in Brooklyn, Connecticut, with Judge Joseph Eaton of Plainfield presiding. Prudence pleaded not guilty. The prosecution, led by Jonathan A. Welch, a Windham County lawyer, with Judson and Ichabod Bulkley appointed as assistant prosecutors, alleged that Prudence taught and boarded African American students without first obtaining a license to do so, violating the Black Law. Arthur Tappan financed Prudence’s legal defense, which included three distinguished white lawyers, William Ellsworth, Calvin Goddard, and Henry Strong.106 Ellsworth, the lead defense attorney, Yale College graduate, and congressman, argued that the Black Law was unconstitutional because it denied African American citizens equal rights. Twelve white male jurors would decide the fate of Prudence and her seminary. This trial, Prudence’s biographer Donald E. Williams Jr. contends, became “the first civil rights case in American history.”107
Though Prudence was the defendant in this case, the prosecution figuratively put her students on trial with her. Contrary to how they had been characterized by Judson and others, however, they came across as educated and poised. In an effort to prove that Prudence had violated the Black Law, the prosecution called at least five African American female students, all nonresidents of Connecticut, to testify, including Theodosia deGrasse, Ann Elizabeth Wilder, Catharine Ann Weldon, Ann Peterson, and Ann Eliza Hammond.108 All five invoked their constitutional right against self-incrimination and thus did not testify. Judson called another student, Eliza Glasko, to the stand, and she too refused. Judson argued that Eliza was in contempt of court for failing to “declare her knowledge in the matter” and thus should be jailed.109 Judge Eaton agreed. The prosecution then spotted Mary Benson in the courtroom and compelled her to testify. Mary, a member of the Benson family of Brooklyn, Connecticut, was Prudence’s friend and had helped her that fateful day that she had been arrested and jailed. The prosecution recognized her. As Donald E. Williams Jr. makes clear, legally she “had no constitutional basis on which to refuse to answer.”110 She testified that Prudence taught Ann Eliza of Providence, Rhode Island, a violation of the Black Law. On the heels of this testimony, Ellsworth advised Eliza Glasko to testify. She did so, recalling that she and her fellow schoolmates learned “reading, writing, grammar, [and] geography” and that “the scriptures were read and explained daily” at the school.111 This depiction captured the eloquence and dignity of the students and portrayed the Canterbury Female Seminary as decidedly Christian, a picture that numerous supporters confirmed.112 A reporter for the Connecticut Courant summed it up best: “Miss Crandall appeared at the bar of the court very interesting, and her pupils were inferior to no others, in their conduct, language and appearance.”113 After closing arguments, the jury deliberated for a few hours, but could not reach a verdict.
The date of the second trial came sooner than Prudence’s defense team expected. Judson refiled charges against her, and the court set her trial date for October 3, 1833. This time, Judson and state attorney Chauncey Cleveland prosecuted the case with new evidence. Judson introduced the testimony of Mary Barber, a white servant who worked alongside Sarah Harris in Jedidiah Shephard’s house. Mary presented a different version of the origins of the Canterbury Female Seminary; she alleged that Prudence convinced Sarah to postpone her engagement to George Fayerweather, a blacksmith, in order to attend the seminary. Donald E. Williams Jr. questions whether Judson and the prosecution influenced and perhaps even composed Mary’s testimony so as to bring Prudence into disrepute.114 Given Mary’s subordinate status, had she been persuaded to give this testimony for the good of the cause of getting rid of the seminary? Or was she being truthful? Both Prudence and Sarah flatly denied her account. By November 1833 Sarah had left the Canterbury Female Seminary anyway and married Fayerweather. Still, Barber’s testimony, which the prosecution likely leaked to the press before the second trial commenced, painted Prudence not as a Christian woman embodying a spirit of benevolence but as a schemer who had lied about her school and defied the conventions of womanhood by redirecting Sarah’s goals. In turn, Barber’s testimony stripped Sarah of any ambition, portraying her instead as pliable, perhaps even passive.
The actions of Chief Justice David Daggett, coupled with Judson’s dogged determination, greatly influenced the outcome of the second trial. While in the first trial, the prosecution focused on Prudence’s violation of the Black Law, in the second trial they resorted to racist scare tactics. Judson described the United States as a “nation of white men” who should “indulge that pride and honor.” To combat a carefully calculated mission by abolitionists to end slavery and bring about race mixing, Judson framed the Black Law as an act of protection. He warned that Prudence’s school and her association with abolitionists threatened that honor and could actually “work to dissolve the Union.” Such an appeal may well have excited the jury despite Ellsworth’s own impassioned speech.115
In both trials Ellsworth’s line of defense actually affirmed the rights and protections of citizenship for African American women. In the first trial, he made an emotional appeal to the jury to support African American education by arguing that the Black Law would “extinguish the light of knowledge, would degrade those who are now degraded, and depress those who are now depressed.” Another of the defense attorneys, Henry Strong, asked the jury to look directly at the young African American women in the courtroom and think about whether they were “worthy of being instructed.” The request cast African American women in a position that departed from prevailing views about black womanhood, not to mention legal restrictions on black civil rights.116
In a moment of judicial activism, Judge Daggett settled the question about black citizenship by stating unequivocally, “Slaves, free blacks or Indians . . . are not citizens.”117 To support this conclusion, he quoted a renowned legal scholar, James Kent, chancellor of New York, who had written, “Free white persons and free colored persons of African blood did not participate equally with the whites in the exercise of civil and political rights.”118 Daggett, who had opposed the manual labor college in New Haven a year or so earlier, instructed the jury to come to a decision on this case based on the alleged fact that the Black Law was constitutional. After a short period of deliberation, the jury found Prudence Crandall guilty and the court ordered her to pay a fine as well as court costs. Most important, the ruling meant that she had to close her seminary. Ellsworth filed an appeal, to be heard in the next session of the Connecticut Supreme Court, in July 1834.
The arguments in the state supreme court case essentially pitted black civil rights against white male supremacy. On July 22, 1834, four Connecticut Supreme Court justices heard Crandall’s appeal:
